March 2012

Money Smart Month

Back in January I mentioned that I was working on a program called Money Smart Week. Since November I’ve been steadily working towards coming up with programs and presenters for the week of 21-28th in April. In January I presented the concept to the Adult Services Committee and got a good response on people interested in hosting something at the library. It’s been nonstop work on scheduling and creating programs and being the middle person between contacts to get to this point. But I’m glad to say we have 22 programs schedule throughout the month of April dealing with financial literacy.

I don’t mind saying that I’m mentally and physically tired. Last week I finished up the system wide program schedule as well as the poster and postcards for my library specific programs and had them approved and sent to the county’s print shop. I’m excited to see how they all turn out and start handing them out. The first seminar program is April 4th, on financial security. There have been some bumps in the road but I guess that’s to be expected on such a large endeavor and I’m the main one spear headed it. I think my learning curve has been very sharp.

NextReads Newsletters

Money Smart Programming has really been the chunk of my to do lists these last few months. But I’ve still squeezed in new duties like take on the NextReads Newsletters for the Cultural Diversity Committee as well as the Home, Garden, and DIY newsletter. You can sign up for those two as well as some others at this link. It’s been fun to work with the committee on the cultural diversity newsletter, we work together to create a very informing newsletter on different cultures and hopefully it will grow in popularity.

Even though it’s been months since I’ve first started, I’m still getting use to being on the reference desk because you truly never know what sort of question you will be faced with, especially in the public. Yesterday I college student came in wanting information on the lunar calendar and cycle. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to help them in a efficient way as there was a line forming. But I didn’t want to send them away empty handed. I was able to find a couple of articles but I told them to leave their email address and I would see what I could find in books after I got off the desk. I spent an hour this morning collecting a good stack of books that I think will help them and we have a schedule meeting tomorrow morning. In the public library world you don’t necessary think of making reference one on one meeting but my supervisor does it all the time for business owners and non-profit people to help them use the sources we have. Somewhere in my mind I thought why can’t I do the same thing with general research help. I mean our desk is a great point of reference provider but sometimes you need to be able to give a person your full attention and the best time to do that I think is off the desk. It’s a model I’ve seen used all the time in the academic library world. So I might start incorporating that into the mix to see how people respond to it. It’s nothing new but it’s a new way for me to approach my job.